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2008 Knit-alongs

How long before I succumb?

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Keiko (Sunapee's Nonpareil) Peasley, 08/23/1998 - 05/04/2008

Rowena Elizabeth Edgar Strong, 10/03/1924 - 05/11/2008

Give Daddy a big hug from us, Mom, and please take Keiko for lots of walks.

Happy Mother's Day.

Sarah

Friday, April 4, 2008

My mother, who lives here in town now, has had some pretty major health issues for the past few months.  She has been in the hospital for the last couple of weeks, and will remain there a while longer.   I've put most of my classes on hold while I concentrate on getting Mom back on her feet.  My sisters have been flying in to help when possible (thank goodness!), and Husband Number One has been doing a stellar job of looking after our boys while I hang out at the hospital.

Knitting is always a good stress reliever:

(Hospital green!)

Please send some big deep breaths in my mom's general direction. 

Sarah

Sunday, March 16, 2008

First, I received a cry for help from Mary D., who recently retired and subsequently abandoned her devoted Michigan friends to move out to the wilds of Wyoming, where, apparently, she has run out of yarn.  More specifically, Mary would be very happy if someone out there in blogland could find a spare ball of Rowan Cork that they would be willing to part with (95% merino, 5% nylon).  She made a lovely bootie for her very cute granddaughter with color SH047, Lot 2F3, but only had enough yarn for one bootie.  She'll take any color of Rowan Cork that she can get her hands on.  Anybody?  Let me know and I'll hook you up with Mary.

Nancy J. e-mailed to check on me, and said she was sure I must have finished more than two little squares so far this year.  She's right:  I've finished three little squares!

This is the February Stitch Challenge from Woven Art:

My blocking and photography skills seem to be worsening.

I knit a pair of socks for Sister Number Two's birthday:

These were knit from Berroco Sox in a very boring 2x2 rib, and are much more exciting on an actual foot.  I probably need to invest in some sock blockers, if only for photographic purposes.

I finished the last in the series of Red Stash Scarves:

How do I know it's the last in the series?  Did I finally run out of red yarn?  No, I did not.  As a matter of fact, I probably could have squeaked one more scarf out of what I had left, but I was so tired of those never ending balls of yarn that I decided to put them out of my their misery.  All gone!

I knit another pair of socks:

These were knit from Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Color 100 (say that 10 times fast!) in an even more boring (but beautiful!) stockinette stitch.  I tried to use this yarn with a fancier stitch pattern, and it fought me every stitch of the way.  I finally listened to the yarn, and am very happy with my newest pair of socks.

I'm trying to knit a pair of socks a month.  I failed in that endeavor last year (I completed six pair, unless you count the two Christmas Stockings from Hell, which still only brought me up to seven pair). 

While researching double knitting for my new Intro to Double Knitting class, I stumbled across Iris Schreier's "Stained Glass Scarf" pattern in Handknit Holidays (from Interweave Press, 2005).  I had the perfect yarn hiding out in my sock yarn stash:  Mer-made from Blackberry Ridge.  Isn't it striking?

I finished it and bound it off just before starting this post, so this is actually a Finished Object.

I'm still working on the second class project for my Intro to Double Knitting class:

The project can be any width or length, depending on how much of the chart (s) you want to use.  My version is a table runner for my black granite table, knit from Louet's Euroflax linen.  Kind of stiff right now, but I plan on throwing it in the washing machine once or twice when I'm done. 

Double knitting is way cool.  I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

And the lace bug finally bit me.  I knew it was coming, because I've been secretly building a healthy stash of laceweight yarns.

This is Nancy Bush's "Ene's Scarf" from Scarf Style.

I'm holding a strand of merino together with a strand of silk, both hand dyed by Nancy at Woven Art.  This project is much farther along than the photo shows (I'm halfway through the third repeat of Chart #3), and is causing me much grief and heartache, because I'm just a few rows away from being completely out of the one-of-a-kind merino that I purchased two years ago.  I've been aware of this sad, sad fact for a few days, but soldiered on to see how far I could get (not far enough).  I've got a plan of action that I'm actually kind of excited about, but I'm not going to share it with you until it's a done deal, for fear that you'll think be able to prove that I'm absolutely nuts.

Speaking of being absolutely nuts:  I sent an e-mail to my mailing list about a week and a half ago.  It said, in part:

My one and only New Year's resolution for 2008 was/is to stop trying to be in control of everything, and to let the Universe (or whatever) take the lead.  Between caring for my mother, my children, myself, my dog, my cats, my house, and my knitters (my husband seems to be hanging in there just fine, or I'd add him to the list, too), I had been feeling decidedly out of control.  So far this year, I've been letting the Universe guide me through the small decisions of my daily life.  It hasn't let me down yet.

One of my book club's selections a couple of months ago was a book called What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, by Ellyn Spragins.  It's a collection of very brief biographical essays of famous women -- actresses, politicians, sports figures, authors -- followed by short letters they have written to themselves at an earlier time of life, usually offering advice or a pep talk to their younger selves.  What struck me most about these letters was that they were mostly about the importance of spending time with their young families and their aging parents.

Can you see where this is going?  It actually took me a couple of months to hear what my new friend, the Universe, was trying to tell me.

I fully intend to honor the teaching commitments that are currently on my calendar (through June, and a little beyond), but, with a couple of exceptions, I will then be going on hiatus for an extended period of time -- probably at least a year.  I plan on continuing with Knitter's Choice, probably increasing its frequency to twice a month, and I plan on teaching for the national Stitches events for a long as they'll have me (now that I've got my foot firmly wedged in that door).

So.  Now you know.  It's going to break my heart to leave my family of knitters behind for a while, but I think my older, wiser self will look back and know that it was the right decision.

Um . . . yeah.  So.

Happy Birthday to Son Number One, and Happy St. Urho's Day!

Sarah

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Hallelujah.  February is OVER, and I'm still standing. 

Despite the bonus of an extra day in the month, I didn't quite make my last deadline, due to getting stuck out of town last night thanks to an unscheduled blinding snowstorm and unplowed roads (good to know:  the Potterville McDonalds is open 24 hours and has free WiFi, although the free WiFi doesn't matter if you don't happen to have your laptop with you).  Today was lost to an unexpected funeral (Husband Number One's uncle), and I'm going to book club tomorrow come hell or high water, because I DID happen to have my book club book with me while living temporarily in the Potterville McDonalds and managed to read the entire thing in under 24 hours -- not all in Potterville though, thank goodness!).  So my end-of-February deadline will (hopefully) be completed Sunday evening (or, more likely, in the wee hours of Monday morning).

Anyway.

So I went to Stitches West, and had a really, really good time, and met lots of really, really nice people, and taught a kabillion really, really fun classes, and got wined and dined, but didn't have my camera with me because I was over my weight limit (my LUGGAGE was over the weight limit, thank you very much) and I therefore had to shed the unnecessary items (like shoes and pants and my camera and my winter coat).  For those of you who know about my alternate reality, I managed to wear long skirts and tall boots the entire weekend, which made me feel tall and elegant, although I probably looked dumpy and schoolmarmish, but no matter.

I happened to have pre-Stitches photos in the camera that are Stitches-relevant, so I am able to illustrate my story somewhat.  I'll try to keep it short (but am already failing miserably).  Let's try to go at it chronologically.

My car told me that it was -2°F when I left home (at 4:45 a.m.) for the 40 minute drive to the Flint airport (which meant it was really probably -20 or so with the wind chill).  I didn't take my winter coat because I was going to CALIFORNIA, for crying out loud, and my giant suitcase was hovering just below the weight limit (see above).  Of course I had to walk outside the airport to get on the plane in Flint, and then off again in Cleveland (wait -- I thought I was going to CALIFORNIA, for crying out loud), but I had on my Faith Jacket and managed to survive the cold.  There was also a lovely trip to Los Angeles, where I had 3 minutes to change planes -- and airlines.  Fortunately, I had already caught that little random change that the airline made and was able to get a later connecting flight.  After getting off the Continental flight in LA, I couldn't see any signs for American Airlines, so I talked to a uniformed person behind a desk who told me I would have to go outside the airport, walk down to terminal 4 (from terminal 6), back in through security, and then I would be at American Airlines.  At first I panicked that I would have to go outside the airport and I didn't have my winter coat with me, and then I remembered that I was in CALIFORNIA now, for crying out loud, and off I went.  It was at least a quarter mile down to terminal 4, and I went through security again (behind a family with two little kids in a double wide stroller and various liquids and shoes to deal with) and found an American Airlines monitor, which told me that flight 3121 (I can't remember the number, but let's just say it was 3121) would be leaving out of gate 441, and that it was on time.  There was a sign pointing toward gates numbering in the forties, so I determined that I was looking for gate 41 in terminal 4.  Off I headed to gate 41, where there was a flight 3121 leaving for Sydney, Australia.  I went to the gate people and said "I don't WANT to go to Sydney, Australia", and they looked at me somewhat politely with raised eyebrows and asked where I DID want to go.  "San Jose," I said.  "Oh," they said, "that's American EAGLE (which my ticket did not say), and you want gate 44-EYE (it was the letter i, not the number one).  You have to go to the sign that says Gate 44 and go down the stairs and get on the bus, which will take you to the right place."  So I did, and it did, but then there was a gate change (44-E), and then a delay, and then I was on a little tiny plane to San Jose next to a woman from Alaska where it had been in the 40s and raining that morning (not fair!), and then I paid way too much for the first shuttle I could find (driven by a shivering man wearing a parka with the hood up -- it was 55 degrees!  You people are wimps!) and was deposited at the conference center.  And then I remembered to breathe.

So that was fun.

I checked in and got the lay of the land, and then hung out in the room until my roommate showed up.  I was lucky enough to be paired up with Karen Frisa, the Knit Doctor (hi Karen!), whose job it is to hold office hours in the Market and answer any and all questions that are thrown at her each day.  As usually happens when I room with someone I barely know, we found all sorts of bizarre similarities, including having lived within a couple miles of each other (although about a decade apart).  Possibly even more freaky was when I tried to play "Name That Yarn" with the jumper weight shetland that she was knitting with.  Karen lives on the east coast, and was knitting with yarn that reminded me an awful lot of something sold exclusively at one of my local yarn shops here in Michigan.  She said it was something I probably would never have heard of.  I said it looked like DOMY, from Old Mill Yarn in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, and pulled out a shawl I had knit out of the same yarn.  Guess what?  Apparently Old Mill Yarn had a booth at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and Karen has a stash of DOMY just like mine.  Weird.

Okay, I'm not doing very well at keeping this short.

Thursday evening:  Vendor and Teacher Reception (free food!), followed by a quick intro at the Student Mixer, followed by the teacher meeting, followed by the Market Session teacher meeting down in the marketplace, followed by divvying up the Market Session class supplies and storing them under the tables in their respective classrooms, followed by trying to do a run through of the market but stopping cold when the aisles suddenly got twice as long.  Overload!  Back to the room to pass out.

Friday morning:  Taught A Well Executed Sleeve (3 hours) to a roomful of appreciative students.  Got good reviews (boy, do I dread reading those evaluations!), but I think I'll make the swatches a little narrower next time so we can spend a little less time on the boring part of the knitting.  After class I got a visit from Mary, who had attended one of the classes I taught for Beth Walker in Oakland last fall.  I had agreed to repair a Norwegian sweater of hers, and she was back to pick it up.  Here are some before photos:

From the front:

From the top:

That was some big moth, eh?

I tore back the stitches until I opened up a complete rectangle, re-knit the front section and the back section, grafted them together at the shoulder, and then wove all the little broken ends into the back of the new piece.  The result?

Not perfect, partly because the repair yarn wasn't a perfect match (I think the sweater was originally knit in the 70s), and partly because of the texture created by the method of repair.  I told Mary to give it a good pressing after snugging the stitches into shape.  I hope she's happy with it!

Friday afternoon:  Taught three one hour Market Session classes:  Sewing Buttons and Zippers (which I developed), Knitting in Both Directions (which I didn't), and Basics of Cables (ditto).

Here are the pieces of the sample for the Sewing Buttons and Zippers class:

I neglected to take a photo of the finished item, and it now lives in the box with all of the other Market Session samples at XRX HQ, so this is all you get.  This class went well, and the Basics of Cables class was pretty good (although the sample was pretty challenging for first time cablers), but I'd like a do-over for the Knitting in Both Directions class.  I had studied the notes and worked through the sample a couple of times prior to teaching, and I had caught and come up with a remedy for a discrepancy in the pattern, but I totally blanked at the beginning of class and was unable to recover gracefully.  Not my finest hour.

I tried walking a little farther into the Market after I was done teaching, only to discover that there was a THIRD section to the aisles that I hadn't discovered earlier.  Talk about overload!  All I managed to purchase was a gift for a friend.  There was just too much to look at!

Friday evening:  I thought I would have Friday evening free, but learned that the Market Session teachers traditionally work behind the scenes at the Vendor Fashion Show, so I now have experience as a dresser.  There's a lot of fast paced dressing and undressing in that back room, and I learned that you've got to have really great hair to be a model (and a thong, apparently), as there is no time to fuss with it between turns on the runway.  I got treated to dinner and drinks at the banquet afterward (more free food!), after which I could barely walk back to my room (I think that was the first time I sat down all day).

Saturday morning:  Preventing and Fixing Mistakes (3 hours), which I always enjoy teaching.  A couple of the evaluations commented that this should have been a class for beginners, although it was billed as "Easy" in the class schedule, so I was confused by those comments.  There is a "New Knitter" rating, but a brand spanking new knitter wouldn't benefit from the class much -- you really need to have been knitting a little for the mistakes and fixes to make sense to you.

Saturday afternoon:  Three more one hour Market Sessions, and I was anxious to make up for my stumble from the previous afternoon.  Another session of Sewing Buttons and Zippers, and of Basics of Cables (which went better because I didn't stick to the sampler pattern as closely), followed by Embellish It! (which I developed, and which we realized that we would need to rename after we actually started saying it out loud), which was sparsely attended but by very lovely knitters.  Here's the original, not very pretty, sample that I worked up at home, with a tassel, a twisted cord, a braid, some fringe, and a couple of pieces of i-cord:

The class ended up using Mission Falls 1824 Cotton (generously donated by Mission Falls), which made for much prettier samples, but I didn't get a photo of those.

Teaching a one hour session is a lot more challenging for me than teaching a 3 hour or 6 hour class.  I need to practice starting more quickly and being more concise in my explanations.  Other difficulties I had with the Market Sessions involved the microphones (big learning curve for me there) and the supplies.  In the future (and there will be a future, since I'll be teaching Market Sessions again at Stitches Midwest this summer) I think I'll try to divide the supplies into individual packets for each student ahead of time, because handing everything out took up a lot of precious class time.  AND, a lot of the students were disappointed when they didn't get to keep the donated knitting needles after class.  I know some of the market students were able to, but I didn't have enough to cover all the students and/or classes that I was teaching, so I had to take the needles back.

Saturday evening:  Student Banquet and Fashion Show.  More free food (yay!), and some very inspiring projects.  And more exhaustion.

Sunday morning:  I got to sleep in!  I didn't teach until an 11:00 Market Session (which would be 2:00 p.m. back in Michigan), which was another Embellish It! class.  Only two students again, but they were very nice and enjoyed making the doo dads.  Before the class, I made some deliveries.  I had brought donations from the Mid Michigan Knitters Guild for the Mother Bear Project, which had a booth right by the front entrance to the Market, and for afghans for Afghans, which had a drop off station at one of the vendor booths.

Here's Nancy's bear for Mother Bear, which was oohed and ahhed over by the volunteers:

And here is a table full of items donated by my guild's fabulous charity knitters to afghans for Afghans (a4A):

I goofed, though, and hadn't mentioned to my knitters that a4A's current campaign was only asking for newborn hats, socks, and blankets, so I'll be hanging onto those very cute little sweaters until another campaign asks for them (bad charity coordinator!).

Underneath the pile is a blanket I crocheted rather quickly out of all of the worsted weight wool scraps from the guild's meager stash, as well as most of the worsted weight wool scraps from my own stash:

And a close-up of the stitch pattern (in the prettiest colors):

Sunday afternoon:  My last 3 hour class, which was the Cut and Paste class.  I really like this class, because it's full of little things I use all the time.  More nice students, particularly Martha, who volunteered to drive me to the airport after class.  Hooray for Martha!

Just before I left the convention center, I visited the restroom where I saw a woman wearing a long wool coat, with a hand knit scarf wrapped around her neck.  She was pulling on a pair of gloves.  She said "I started to walk out to the parking ramp to get my car, and that wind hit me, and I had to turn around and come back in and bundle up."  I went outside with Martha to walk to the parking ramp, and was delighted by the Spring-like weather.  I would have taken my sweater off if I'd had another hand.  It was gloriously warm -- probably still in the 50s.

The trip home was relatively uneventful (except that I got to see Karen Frisa in the airport for a bonus visit, and I visited Atlanta instead of Cleveland on the way back).  The temperature in Michigan was a balmy 32°F, so I didn't mind that I didn't have my coat.

I think that's it.  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I think I've gone on long enough.  And I'm not going back through it to proofread, so please be kind.

I'm off to sleep in my bed tonight, which will be a bit more comfortable than that booth in McDonald's was last night.  Did I mention that Dave (Dan?) the homeless guy rode his bike out into the snowstorm and brought me back a magazine from the convenience store?  I had such kind neighbors in Potterville.  Maybe I'll retire there someday.  I wonder what those booths are selling for?

Sarah

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